The Greasy Spoon | It's not just about Haute Cuisine...

Particular Delights

 

 

I'm very aware that I haven't written anything since last month. Having said that, I'm not especially keen on the blogger who only posts sporadically, with accompanying gushy excuses about "being incredibly busy" and "life is hectic". You will know the type. It's a bit like people who are late for meetings complaining about the "awful traffic". In Soho, Covent Garden or St James's.

But this time, I have a proper excuse: I've been working for the last six months on my new online decorative antiques shop (www.lukehoney.co.uk). I don't normally plug my "other life" on The Greasy Spoon, but this time I'm going to. Unashamedly. It's currently a holding page, although you can quite easily log on, and sign up for my regular newsletter. I'm expecting the site to go officially live over the next few days.

Although I'm currently known in the business as a specialist in antique games (you know the sort of thing- ivory chess sets, leather backgammon boards, eighteenth century gambling chips, mah jong, interesting antique roulette wheels) I'm also going to be dealing in other Country House goodies: Regency reverse glass mezzotints, Fornasetti, Modern British paintings and prints, Gothic revival furniture, old ikats, Chinese blue and white ceramics, convex Empire mirrors, library ladders, vintage globes, fascinating old medical charts. There's going to be a blog too, linked to the site. A new blog on antiques, architecture, design and the like; anything that grabs me- and as you've probably worked out by now, I've got eclectic interests.

In the meantime, back to the food- and long may that continue. Grub Street very kindly sent me an advance copy of Nathalie Hambro's Particular Delights through the post. I'm a big fan of Grub Street. They publish foodie authors of interest, and I love the quality of their production: lovely smooth, creamy paper; well sewn bindings, soothing typography, tasteful illustrations.

Particular Delights was first published in 1981 and won the Glenfiddich Award for food writing, and it's been a favourite on my bookshelf for some time now. Some of Nathalie Hambro's recipes are a bit weird, (I seem to remember a scrambled egg studded with kidney beans, and a celery and banana salad), but that would be missing the point; the book is stunningly original. I like the sound of Grape and Radish salad (sliced radishes, black and white grapes, bound in a yoghurt and dill dressing) and Smoked Oysters steamed in Vine Leaves (vine leaves stuffed with ricottta cheese, smoked oysters, dried fungi, coriander, spinach and spring onions and seasoned with cayenne pepper, mace and salt).

I like cooks who invent their own dishes. If this sort of thing floats your boat, have a look at Sybil Kapoor's Taste, A New Way to Cook; and Niki Segnit's The Flavour Thesaurus. Experimentation and Creativity are the way forward!

 

 

Happy Christmas

 

Robert Braithwaite Martineau (1826-1869) The Christmas Hamper

 

To all readers of The Greasy Spoon, wishing you a very Happy Christmas and with every best wish for the New Year!

 

Rex Whistler and The Tate Gallery Restaurant

 

 

Rex Whistler (1905-1944), "Self-Portrait", 1940, National Army Museum

One of my favourite biographies of the 1980's is Laurence Whistler's The Laughter and The Urn, an affectionate portrait of his brother, the artist and illustrator, Rex Whistler. Rex was killed in July 1944 as the Guards Armoured Division attempted to break out of the salient at Caen. His languid self-portrait, painted in 1940, is now in the possession of the National Army Museum. He's sitting on the edge of the balcony of one of those Nash stucco terraces in Regent's Park, self-aware in his new uniform of the Welsh Guards; Sam Browne belt unbuckled, cocktail tray and paint brushes at the ready.

Rex Whistler died at far too young an age. He is remembered now for his charming, delightful, whimsical if frivolous, illustrations (Beverley Nichol's Down the Garden Path, immediately comes to mind); he was after all, a friend of Stephen Tennant and a Bright Young Thing, but his later work shows the promise of greater things. Here's his portrait of Sargeant Isaacs, Welsh Guards:

 

 

Rex Whistler (1905-1944) "The Master Cook", Sergeant Isaacs of the Welsh Guards, 1940 or 1941.

 

 

Rex Whistler (1905-1944), "Caroline Paget", circa 1938

 

In 1926, The Tate Gallery commissioned Whistler to redecorate the murals of their then refreshment room, now the Rex Whistler Restaurant at Tate Britain (the restaurant is currently closed for re-fururbishment until 2013).

With quirky wit, Rex called his murals The Expedition in Pursuit of Rare Meats: "a hunting party is formed, including a princess and her maid, a prince, a colonel, a captain, a pantry boy and the son of an impoverished nobleman. At the start of the mural they are seen leaving a palace and riding across the countryside, spearing sturgeon, hunting for truffles and other delicacies. The hunters encounter wild and mythical beasts on their journey through the mountains and forests including a leopard and a unicorn".

 

 

Rex Whistler (1905-1944), "The Expedition in Pursuit of Rare Meats", Tate Gallery, London, 1927

 

Yesterday I mentioned my "cook books to save in the event of a fire shelf". I've got another one to add (this is growing by the day). It's The Tate Cookbook, by Paul King and Michael Driver, published by The Tate Gallery in 1996. It might just be still available new, otherwise you should easily be able to track one down through amazon or abebooks. I really love it. Published in an elegant format, with a terrific dust-jacket by William Strang ("Bank Holiday", painted in 1912) it's generously illustrated with food-related paintings and drawings by the likes of William Nicholson, Vanessa Bell, Elisabeth Blackadder, William Scott, Duncan Grant, Stanley Spencer and Walter Sickert.

Inside, there's a selection of relatively simple, elegant (like "iconic", a much over-used word, but I'm going to use it again without hesitation in this case), recipes with a British, even Nursery twist: buttered crab, venison pâté en croûte with Cumberland Sauce, poached pears with stilton walnut quennelles, omelette arnold bennett, breast of pheasant with pâté croutons and Madeira sauce, whisky and coffee ice cream, brioche and butter pudding, lemon soufflé. All this is similar, in some ways, to the 1920s' and 30's recipes in Arabella Boxer's Book of English Food.

 

 

William Strang (1859-1921), "Bank Holiday", 1912, dust-jacket design for The Tate Cookbook

 

Related articles

The unseen artist - Rex Whistler
The Savoy's Cream Cheese and Marmite Sandwiches
Portraits of maternal bliss, Tate Gallery.
Chefs in Art

Coca-Cola

 

 

 

Doesn't it just taste so much better in a bottle?

 

Before the Theatre

 

 

Before the theatre: Prunier's Snack Bar by "Eric" (Carl Erickson, 1891-1958), Vogue Magazine, late 1930's, (from Food in Vogue, Six Decades of Cooking and Entertaining, edited by Barbara Tims, Harrap London, 1976)

Related articles

Old Covent Garden Market

Winston's Breakfast

 

 

Sir William Nicholson (1872-1949), Study for Breakfast at Chartwell II, Sir Winston Churchill and Clementine Ogilvy Hozier, Lady Churchill, in the Dining Room at Chartwell, with their cat, Tango, The National Trust

 

I had an unashamedly teary afternoon yesterday watching Richard Attenborough's poignant film, Young Winston, (1972). It's shown in an edited version on minor television channels from time to time, which is a pity- as it is a marvellous film. Terrific (no, outstanding performances) from Anne Bancroft as Jennie Churchill and Robert Shaw as Lord Randolph. Simon Ward's also superb as the young thruster, and there's lots of Elgar.

Which reminded me of Sir William Nicholson's charming Study for Breakfast at Chartwell, painted just before the outbreak of the Second World War, at the time of Churchill's Wilderness Years. Those of you who have visited Chartwell will probably recognise the rather stylish 1930's dining room. Their little marmalade cat, Tango, is sitting on the table next to Clemmie. I was pleased to see this, as this is just the sort of behaviour we get from our beloved, but utterly pesky, Burmese brown, Oskie.

I'm firmly of the opinion that a proper English Breakfast is one of our greatest contributions to civilisation. Taken sitting at a shiny mahogany table; with the bright morning light streaming in through the windows, bouncing off the polished silver. Starched white linen napkins, silver toast racks, little pots for the hot, tangy English mustard. Chafing dishes on the sideboard. Kedgeree, kippers, grilled sausages, devilled kidneys, toast, Seville orange marmalade, grilled bacon, grilled tomatoes, eggs both poached and scrambled, smoked haddock, porridge, Earl Grey tea, black coffee.

 

 

Jennie Jerome, Lady Randolph Churchill

Related articles

Churchill's Chartwell

Who said dinner parties were boring?

 

 

Sidekick, Paris

Harper’s Bazaar, March 1965 

Photographer: Melvin Sokolsky

Model: Dorothea McGowan

Related articles

Last Dinner on The Titanic

Grace Coddington memoir exclusive extract: the later years

Vegetarian Seduction

 

An Apple a Day...

 

Lovely graphics from the William Tell Apple Co. of North Carolina. 1940's. As it's Burns Night this evening, I'm am also featuring one of my early posts on Haggis at the top of the page.

Restaurants in Art

 

 

The New Yorker

 

I've been a massive fan of the iconic New Yorker covers since as long as I can remember. The dry, urbane humour of the magazine's cartoon art is marvellous, too. This one's "Turkey Dinner" by Wayne Thiebaud, published tomorrow (November 21st, 2011).  

The style reminds me of David Hockney's 1978 menu cover for the Ma Maison restaurant:

 

 

Hockney also designed the menu covers for Odin's, Langan's Brasserie and the Neal Street Restaurant. I love his menu design for the Salts Diner:

 

 

The Penguin Great Food Series

 

 

 

"In this memoir-turned-cookbook, Alice B. Toklas describes her life with partner Gertrude Stein and their famed Paris salon, which entertained the great avant-garde and literary figures of their day. With dry wit and characteristic understatement Toklas ponders the ethics of killing a carp in her kitchen before stuffing it with chestnuts, decorating a fish to amuse Picasso at lunch and travelling across France during the First World War in an old delivery truck..."

 

Here's Alice B. Toklas's "Murder in the Kitchen" from the new Penguin Great Food Series, the cover designed by Coralie Bickford-Smith. Despite the threat from the sinister Kindle, I happen to think that this country is enjoying a "golden age of book design", and I often unashamedly buy new books as much for the design of their dust-jackets or typography, as for their contents. The pleasure book-collecting has given me over the last few years has been immense, and you'll find that paperbacks such as these are not only eminently collectable, but also affordable too.

 

But I have a major quibble- and Penguin Books, I hope you're reading. Why-oh-why did you decide to issue this potentially marvellous series in abridged form? They're slim little critters, priced at seven golden nuggs a piece- and remind me of those freebie books you're given now and again with "The Times" or "The Daily Telegraph". I loved Colonel Wyvern's "Notes from Madras", and am now desperate to read more of it. A slim 78 or so pages ain't enough! Is this a form of dumbing down?  Do Penguin think that buyers are incapable of reading the complete book?

Chefs in Art

 

 

Sir William Orpen (1878-1931) "The chef of l’Hotel Chatham", shown at the Royal Academy in 1921.

 

 

Rex Whistler (1905-1944) "The Master Cook", Sergeant Isaacs of the Welsh Guards, 1940 or 1941.

 

 

David Hockney (bn. 1937) "Peter Langan in his kitchen at Odin's", ink on paper, 1969, sold at Christie's for £19,120 (inc. buyer's premium) in 2004.

 

 

Chaim Soutine (1893-1943) "The Pastry Chef", 1927.

 

 

Francis Edwin Hodge (1883-1949) "The Arts Club's Woman Chef", 1935, The Arts Club, London.

Collecting Rare and Vintage Cookery Books

 

 

I've just been sorting out my collection of books on food and wine. I never intentionally set out to collect this sort of thing; but being a second-hand bookshop junkie, have, over the years, amassed a wide assortment of interesting old books on all sorts of different subjects. Above is a first edition of Michael Smith's Fine English Cookery, published in 1973. And how things have changed!  Michael Smith, for example, tells us how to make a traditional kedgeree using tinned salmon. And that's what's interesting about these fascinating old books. Who today would make Bon Viveur's blue-dyed egg canapes, with anchovy garnish, and lover-ly piped mashed potato?

 

 

 

 

The internet has had a beneficial knock-on effect on the price of some of these books, and it's now easy to get online, and discover just how much that old dog-eared copy might actually be worth. Take Floyd's Food, for example. I've got a slightly grubby copy of it, much used over the years, and stained with the shipwreck of time. But it's rather valuable. This was one of the very early Keith Floyd books, published in a tiny print run by a local Bristol publisher just before "Floyd on France" made him famous. For Floyd "completists", that's the hard one to track down. The first edition of Marco Pierre White's White Heat is another sought after title.

 

I'm currently looking out for cookery books published in the pre-war era. They're the sort of thing which you used to be able to find relatively easily, but now are becoming increasingly scarce. Books from the 60's and 70's are still available- and could be a good area for starting a collection. They're also fun- and often have great graphics. One of these is The Bachelor Chef. Written by the elusive "Simon Tiffany", and published by Arlington Books of St James's in 1965, it's full of dodgy recipes involving cans of this, and cans of that; a self-help manual for wannabe playboys, and international men of mystery. Lots of hilariously kitsch drawings too, in the manner of the late Stephen Ward.

 

 

Absinthe

 

 

As I'm in a rather decadant, fin de siecle sort of mood, I've decided this morning to write about absinthe. Recently, I asked a friend if they would like a glass of "the green fairy". My generous offer was rejected with a look of horror, fear, and pity. Yes, absinthe still has a more than sinister reputation, and most people out there are vaguely aware that the stuff used to be illegal.

What exactly is absinthe? Absinthe is a distilled, anise-flavored spirit derived from herbs including the flowers and leaves of the medicinal plant Artemisia absinthium, also called Grand Wormwood or Absinthe Wormwood. The wormwood contains small quantities of thujone. It's also highly alchoholic.

The stuff I drink, La Fee, is a staggering 68% proof (that's almost double the strength of Gordon's Gin)- and some brands are even stronger. But there are so many half truths in the absinthe legend. You don't drink the absinthe neat, you dilute it with water; and this involves a curious ritual. Ideally you need a proper absinthe glass, which has a small reservoir at the bottom. Into the glass goes the neat absinthe. Next, you place the pierced absinthe spoon over the top of the glass, on to which goes a lump of sugar. Iced water is poured over the sugar, through the spoon, and down into the glass. The water turns the absinthe opaque (this is called the "louche"), and the flavours, herbals, and  aromatics are released.

 

 

 

Absinthe was originally invented in Switzerland, but became hugely popular in France, especially at the end of the nineteenth century. During the 1880's and 1890's the wine trade suffered badly, and absinthe drinking became widespread, especially amongst Parisian artists, intellectuals and the Bohemian set. So widespread in fact, that it became a social problem; but more from the amount of absinthe consumed, than the scientific properties of the drink itself. After a series of rather grisly murders (blamed on absinthe), the drink was banned by the French government in 1915, and then by other countries around the world, apart from Great Britain, Spain, and Portugal.

 

It's still quasi-illegal in the United States, because of the thujone content, which can supposedly give you hallucinations if taken in high quantities. But then so can oil of bergamot (used to flavour Earl Grey tea)! Modern absinthes have significantly small, and I stress, non-harmful levels of thujone. Absinthe is safe. Trust me! So there it is. The story of absinthe. I had a glass last night, and it was good. Extremely good. And less bitter than you would think, helped along by the iced water and the sugar cube. They say it leaves you with a clear head, and helps to concentrate your thinking. And I think it does, as I leapt out of bed this morning full of joie de vivre. Allez l'absinthe!